The related initiatives of SOA and BPM continue to evolve despite slowed deployments due to financial constraints. Product suites grow in breadth to accommodate advanced analytics, CEP, and governance, while vendor consolidation gathers pace and impacts the number of choices available. Other initiatives such as cloud computing and social media have a direct bearing on expectations of SOA and BPM.

Features and benefits

Lack of clarity about the roles of SOA and BPM has caused inappropriate use in some instances, and these experiences could deter others.

Merger and acquisition of user organisations and technology vendors has changed the SOA and BPM landscape and caused some re-evaluation of strategies.

Other recent IT initiatives have reduced the focus on SOA and BPM and diluted the investment effort available.

Highlights

BPM retains a high business visibility but without the abstraction and service architecture provided by SOA it is unlikely to deliver its full potential. Avoidance of investment in the design and architecture of services will be detrimental in the long term.Practical experience of delivering SOA and BPM solutions shows the need for several related technologies such as modeling tools, advanced analytics, complex event processing, and governance. The breadth of solution suites seems set to keep on expanding, and this will continue to drive vendor consolidation.

Your key questions answered

Understand why Ovum believes the roles of BPM and SOA still need to be clarified in the minds of budget holders.

Understand the impact of vendor consolidation on product choice and the broadening of SOA/BPM product suites.

Understand the relevance of SOA and BPM to other IT initiatives such as SaaS, cloud computing, and social media.

SUMMARY

Catalyst
Ovum view
Key messages

BUSINESS TRENDS AND TECHNOLOGY ENABLERS

Major trends in BPM and SOA

THE ROLES OF BPM AND SOA NEED TO BE CLARIFIED IN THE MINDS OF BUDGET-HOLDERS

There is an imbalance between the adoption of BPM and SOA
The integration continuum and the roles of SOA and BPM
Horses for courses
SOA
BPM

VENDOR CONSOLIDATION IS LEADING TO RICHER AND BROADER COMMERCIAL PRODUCTS

Integration of the supporting technologies
Users faced with an “end of product life” decision
Further extensions to the ecosystem

MERGER AND ACQUISITION ACTIVITY IN USER ORGANIZATIONS IS STARTING TO MAKE FEDERATION AN ISSUE

Problems can arise when companies both have established SOA and BPM initiatives in place
Leave the systems in place and federate them
Retain independent systems but provide some common capabilities
Migrate to a single solution

BPM AND SOA CAN ADD VALUE TO APPARENTLY DISCONNECTED TRENDS SUCH AS SAAS, CLOUD, AND SOCIAL MEDIA

New IT initiatives while still in the early phases of adoption of the previous one can be a distraction
Cloud computing and its variants
Social media and its relevance to SOA and BPM

RECOMMENDATIONS

Recommendations for enterprises
Recommendations for vendors

APPENDIX

Further reading
Methodology
Authors
Ovum Consulting
Disclaimer

TABLES

Table: Summary of major trends in BPM and SOA

FIGURES

Figure: Adoption of BPM and SOA by organizations with more than 5,000 employees
Figure: The integration continuum
Figure: Partial mapping of technologies to broad SOA and BPM product sets
Figure: Hierarchy of provision of resources by cloud computing